A Green Bough, William Faulkner

Contents
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XL
XLI
XLII
XLIII
XLIV

A Green Bough

I

WE SIT drinking tea
Beneath the lilacs on a summer afternoon
Comfortably, at our ease
With fresh linen on our knees,
And we sit, we three
In diffident contentedness
Lest we let each other guess
How happy we are
Together here, watching the young moon
Lying shyly on her back, and the first star.

There are women here:
Smooth-shouldered creatures in sheer scarves, that pass
And eye us strangely as they pass.
One of them, our hostess, pauses near:
— Are you quite all right, sir? she stops to ask.
— You are a bit lonely, I fear.
Will you have more tea? cigarettes? No? —
I thank her, waiting for her to go:
To us they are like figures on a masque.

— Who? — shot down
Last spring — Poor chap, his mind
.… doctors say … hoping rest will bring —
Busy with their tea and cigarettes and books
Their voices come to us like tangled rooks.

We sit in silent amity.
— It was a morning in late May:
A white woman, a white wanton near a brake,
A rising whiteness mirrored in a lake;
And I, old chap, was out before the day
In my little pointed-eared machine,
Stalking her through the shimmering reaches of the sky.
I knew that I could catch her when I liked
For no nymph ever ran as swiftly as she could.

We mounted, up and up
And found her at the border of a wood:
A cloud forest, and pausing at its brink
I felt her arms and her cool breath.

The bullet struck me here, I think
In the left breast
And killed my little pointed-eared machine. I saw it fall
The last wine in the cup.…
I thought that I could find her when I liked,
But now I wonder if I found her, after all.

One should not die like this
On such a day,
From angry bullet or other modern way.
Ah, science is a dangerous mouth to kiss.

One should fall, I think, to some Etruscan dart
In meadows where the Oceanides
Flower the wanton grass with dancing,
And, on such a day as this
Become a tall wreathed column: I should like to be
An ilex on an isle in purple seas.

Instead, I had a bullet through my heart —
— Yes, you are right:
One should not die like this,
And for no cause nor reason in the world.

’Tis well enough for one like you to talk
Of going in the far thin sky to stalk
The mouth of death: you did not know the bliss
Of home and children; the serene
Of living and of work and joy that was our heritage.

And, best of all, of age.
We were too young.
Still — he draws his hand across his eyes
— Still, it could not be otherwise.
We had been
Raiding over Mannheim. You’ve seen
The place? Then you know
How one hangs just beneath the stars and sees
The quiet darkness burst and shatter against them
And, rent by spears of light, rise in shuddering waves
Crested with restless futile flickerings.

The black earth drew us down, that night
Out of the bullet-tortured air:
A great black bowl of fireflies.…
There is an end to this, somewhere:
One should not die like this —
One should not die like this.

His voice has dropped and the wind is mouthing his words
While the lilacs nod their heads on slender stalks,
Agreeing while he talks,
Caring not if he is heard or is not heard.

One should not die like this.
Half audible, half silent words
That hover like gray birds
About our heads.
We sit in silent amity.

I am cold, for now the sun is gone
And the air is cooler where we three
Are sitting. The light has followed the sun
And I no longer see
The pale lilacs stirring against the lilac-pale sky.

They bend their heads toward me as one head.
— Old man — they say — How did you die?
I — I am not dead.
I hear their voices as from a great distance — Not dead
He’s not dead, poor chap; he didn’t die —

II

LAXLY reclining, he watches the firelight going
Across the ceiling, down the farther wall
In cumulate waves, a golden river flowing
Above them both, down yawning dark to fall
Like music dying down a monstrous brain.

Laxly reclining, he sees her sitting there
With firelight like a hand laid on her hair,
With firelight like a hand upon the keys
Playing a music of lustrous silent gold.

Bathed in gold she sits, upon her knees
Her silent hands, palm upward, lie at ease,
Filling with gold at each flame’s spurting rise,
Spilling gold as each flame sinks and sighs,
Watching her plastic shadow on the wall
In unison with the firelight lift and fall
To the music by the firelight played
Upon the keys from which her hands had strayed
And fallen.

A pewter bowl of lilies in the room
Seems to him to weigh and change the gloom
Into a palpable substance he can feel
Heavily on his hands, slowing the wheel
The firelight steadily turns upon the ceiling.
The firelight steadily hums, steadily wheeling
Until his brain, stretched and tautened, suddenly cracks.

Play something else.
And laxly sees his brain
Whirl to infinite fragments, like brittle sparks,
Vortex together again, and whirl again.
Play something else.

He tries to keep his tone
Lightly natural, watching the shadows thrown,
Watching the timid shadows near her throat
Link like hands about her from the dark.
His eyes like hurried fingers fumble and fly
About the narrow bands with which her dress is caught
And lightly trace the line of back and thigh.
He sees his brain disintegrate, spark by spark.

Play something else, he says.
And on the dark
His brain floats like a moon behind his eyes,
Swelling, retreating enormously. He shuts them
As one concealed suppresses two loud cries
And on the troubled lids a vision sees:
It is as though he watched her mount a stair
And rose with her on the suppleness of her knees,
Saw her skirts in swirling line on line,
Saw the changing shadows ripple and rise
After the flexing muscles; subtle thighs,
Rhythm of back and throat and gathered train.

A bursting moon, wheels spin in his brain.
As through a corridor rushing with harsh rain
He walks his life, and reaching the end
He turns it as one turns a wall
She plays, and softly playing, sees the room
Dissolve, and like a dream the still walls fade
And sink, while music softly played
Softly flows through lily-scented gloom.

She is a flower lightly cast
Upon a river flowing, dimly going
Between two silent shores where willows lean,
Watching the moon stare through the willow screen.

The hills are dark and cool, clearly remote,
Within whose shadow she has paused to rest.
Could she but stay here forever, where grave rain slants above them,
Rain as slow as starlight on her breast;
Could she but drift forever along these ways
Clearly shadowed, barred with veils of rain,
Beneath azure fields with stars in choired processional
To chant the silence from her heart again.

Laxly reclining, he feels the firelight beating
A clamor of endless waves upon the dark,
A swiftly thunderous surf swiftly retreating.
His brain falls hissing from him, a spark, a spark,
And his eyes like hurried fingers fumble and fly
Among the timid shadows near her throat,
About the narrow bands with which her dress is caught,
And lightly trace the line of back and thigh.

He sees his brain disintegrate, spark by spark,
And she turns as if she heard two cries.
He stands and watches her mount the stair
Step by step, with her subtle suppleness,
That nervous strength that was ever his surprise;
The lifted throat, the thin crisp swirl of dress
Like a ripple of naked muscles before his eyes.

A bursting moon: wheels spin in his brain,
And whirl in a vortex of sparks together again.
At the turn she stops, and trembles there,
Nor watches him as he steadily mounts the stair.

III

THE cave was ribbed with dark. Then seven lights
Like golden bats windy along the eaves
Awoke and slipped inverted anchorage
In seven echoes of an unheard sound.
The cave is ribbed with music. Rumored far
The gate behind the moonwashed sentinel
Clangs to his lifted mace. Then all the bats
Of light slant whirring down the inclined air.

The cave no more a cave is: ribs of music
Arch and crack the walls, the uncaged bats
From earth’s core break its spun and floating crust.
Hissing seas rage overhead, and he
Staring up through icy twilight, sees
The stars within the water melt and sweep
In silver spears of streaming burning hair.

The seas roar past, shuddering rocks in seas
Mutter away like hoarse and vanquished horns.
Now comes dark again, he thinks, but finds
A wave of gold breaking a jewelled crest
And he is walled with gold. About him snored
Kings and mitred bishops tired of sin
Who dreamed themselves of heaven wearied,
And now may sleep, hear rain, and snore again.
One among them walks, whose citadel
Though stormed by sleep, is still unconquered.

In crimson she is robed, her golden hair,
Her mouth still yet unkissed, once housed her in
The sharp and quenchless sorrows of the world.
Kings in hell, robed in icy flame
Panted to crown them with her dreamless snows;
Glutted bishops, past the sentinel,
Couched in heaven, mewed for paradise.

Amid the dead walks she who, musicfleshed,
Whose mouth, two notes laid one on other for
A honeyed parting on the hived store;
Whose throat a sweetened reed had blown to be;
Whose breast was harped of silver and of two
Grave small singing birds uncaged; the chant
Of limbs to one another tuned and wed
That, as she walked, the air with music filled;
Now she, for whose caress once duke and king
And scarlet cardinal broke cords of fate,
From couch to couch her restless slumber seeks
And strokes indifferent lead with moaning hands.

The citied dead snore past, the hissing seas
Roar overhead again, and bows of coral
Whip gleaming fish in darts of unmouthed colors:
Trees of coral strip their colored leaves
Of fish, and each leaf has two bats of light
Where eyes would be, while other golden bats
Slipping among them, gleam their curving sides.

Thundering rocks crash down; spears of starlight
Shatter and break among them. Water-stallions
Neighing, crest the foaming rush of tides.
Drowning waves, airward rushing, crash
Columned upward, rake the stars and hear
A humming chord within the heavens bowled,
Then plunging back, they lose between the rocks
A dying rumor of the chanting stars.

The cave is ribbed with music; threads of sound
Gleam on the whirring wings of bats